His business years from 1930 until now in 1975 and also additions of proprietors on his property.
The early 1930's were tough years for everyone. Hannaford had two disastrous fires in the late 1920's. The sidewalks on Main Street were broken up. Business was practically nil. Asher had two Minneapolis combines that had been repossessed. My brother Wayne, Roy Richardson and I operated these combines in the fall for a few years. Crops were short and the weeds were high. I remember combining wheat that made 4 bushels per acre. We would combine during the day and fix rattles and chains at night.
At this time Carl Brudwick had a cream station next to Sinclair's post office and the restaurant. He got another job and I bought him out. I bought cream, eggs, and poultry. In the late fall Peterson- Biddick from Jamestown would send a turkey truck out and we would go from farm to farm buying turkeys. Our machine business consisted of repairs for Moline Monitor drills, McCormick and John Deere mower parts and what was called back-rakes for gathering hay. These consisted of a set of 9-foot wooden teeth bolted to a simple frame with a single-tree on each side to hook a horse to. The hay was brought up to an over-shot stacker that was the height of efficiency. A team of horses hooked to a rope pulled the hay up on a slide and dumped it on the stack. One or two men were in the stack to level out the hay. Most farmers were very fussy about the way the hay was laid in the stack.
Our old shop was in pretty bad shape. The front windows were broken and the floor sagged. But after the Sinclair building burned, part of my cream station burned also. So I moved my equipment back to the old store and went together with Asher. We still bought cream, eggs, and poultry. And sold a few repairs, a monitor drill once in a while, we sold seed corn and we owned the L. B. Moore Blacksmith shop, where we set up a seed cleaning plant. We scarified and cleaned alfalfa and sweet clover seed. We sold seed corn, millet, sudan grass and a full line of Oscar H. Wills garden seed. Asher was the country salesman. He traded sheep bucks and anything the farmer wanted.
In between times Asher had a few auction sales. And in 1940 we took on the full line of Minneapolis- Moline line of machinery. He sold the first Minneapolis "U" tractor to Christenson Brothers of Rogers. Beginning with the better crops and fair prices for farm goods, we prospered and in 1946 we built the building I now have. In 1947, before the building was entirely completed we had a Minneapolis- Moline show and a State Mill & Elevator pancake feed that was well attended and greatly enjoyed by everyone. All I remember for sure is, we used over 5 gallons of syrup. In the fall of the year for three years we had a seed demonstration sponsored by Northrup King & Company Charles Palm always won the seed corn display with a circular arrangement of Rainbow flint corn.
After 1948 we sold Zenith radios and wonder of wonders Zenith TVs. Zenith allowed each dealer to demonstrate a 27" console T. V. for a month. It was quite a conversation piece. And Minneapolis- Moline sent out the first tractor with a factory built cab.
O. A. Otteson closed his restaurant and drug store in the 30's and after the fire that took Aarestad Brothers & Troseth Hardware. Paul Troseth opened his hardware store next to us. In the early 40's my sons opened a small restaurant in our old office building. This changed hands several times. Martin and Borghild Haugen operated it at one time. Then when a bowling alley was proposed for Hannaford we got Eslingers to demolish the building for the lumber and a little cash. The lots were sold to the Stri-King Lanes Corp. for a bowling lanes. About this time I went out of the implement business and put in the Automatic Laundry.
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 123